Last Sunday, the HBO Max drama The Pitt walked away as one of the big winners at this year’s Emmys. With all that acclaim, it’d be natural to wonder whether the network has plans to expand beyond the series; in fact, writers are already lining up to turn The Pitt into a franchise. Those hopes have already been dashed, however: HBO CEO Casey Bloys is against the idea, and though he candidly recognizes the value of the show, he’s also aware that The Pitt is “lightning in a bottle.”
Not only did beloved star Noah Wyle win in the Lead in a Drama Series category, but the series won Outstanding Drama Series as well. Winners also included Katherine LaNasa as Supporting Actress, Shawn Hatosy as Guest Actor, and Best Casting for the series. It beat favorites such as Severance, as well as HBO’s own The White Lotus and The Last of Us. Bloys said this to Variety about the victory:
“Having The Pitt break through is a really big deal for a lot of reasons…I never count on anything walking in, because you never know. I think it was pretty clear people felt that it was Severance versus The Pitt. You just never know how it’s going to turn out. But I’m really happy with how everything worked out.”
However, as happy as he is with the wins, Bloys is quick to reject the idea of expanding The Pitt with a night shift spinoff, let alone a drama that runs on a more conventional format. He celebrates the model made popular with network television, and the one used in The Pitt, but he’s more interested in applying it elsewhere:
“No! Listen, when we decided to move forward with The Pitt, the idea was we’re going to try this, and we’re going to develop other shows in this model. They don’t have to be a spin-off. But that model, I think The Pitt showed that it could work for us.
“So we’ve been developing other types of shows: a cop show, a family show, etc. We will be developing those and trying to do it again. But as I’ve said, The Pitt is lightning in a bottle. So the idea that we’re going to do another one, that it’s going to work out, you never know. But it did prove that the model could work in streaming.”
Doing So Much With So Little: Comparing ‘The Pitt’ to HBO’s Juggernauts
HBO Max
HBO has made giants like Game of Thrones, Succession, The Sopranos, Chernobyl, and True Detective. It’s absurd to compare The Pitt with those, as they have a unique cinematic style, which is also synonymous with HBO’s capacity for production value. The Pitt has more of a network television look and feel”; even so, it managed to beat giants during television’s greatest night. Bloys also admitted that the industry has been focusing heavily on large-scale TV shows, and The Pitt’s success may prove the show is a game-changer:
“The concept of the show being on essentially one set made the budget manageable. And you have a group of people who understand how to make 15 episodes, but also how to bring it back on an annual basis. That is the one thing I think that we’ve gotten away from in television, that ability to bring shows back on an annual basis. It’s understandable, as we have shows that are huge to do sometimes, like The Last of Us or House of the Dragon. The reason people love them is they’re huge spectacles with special effects and amazing locations. That’s great.
“But I think maybe as an industry we’ve focused a lot on those — and the bread-and-butter shows churning out high-quality episodes, week after week, is a really tough thing to do. For The Pitt to be recognized for what it’s done is especially gratifying. It’s always great to win awards, but it’s especially gratifying for the show that’s trying something that can be really hard.”
Release Date
January 9, 2025
Network
Max
Showrunner
R. Scott Gemmill
Directors
Amanda Marsalis
Writers
Joe Sachs, Cynthia Adarkwa
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Noah Wyle
Dr. Michael ‘Robby’ Robinavitch
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Tracy Ifeachor
Dr. Heather Collins
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